I slightly over exaggerated the comprehensiveness of patent assignee and
inventor coverage for US patents in the PlusPat file on Questel-Orbit.
98% of US patents from the 1920s to the 1960s have assignee or inventor
information. A comprehensive breakdown of the coverage is: 1920s - 95%,
1930s - 98%, 1940s - 99%, 1950s - 98%, and 1960s - 98%.
Regarding the Minimum PCT Documentation and Patent Families I have copied
descriptions from the EPO's website (they can also be found in the Espacenet
Help Files).
WIPO is also an excellent source for additional and detailed information
regarding the Min. PCT and information can be found on the WIPO site at
http://www.wipo.int/scit/en/standards/
We must not forget is that Derwent also compiles patent families, but they
will have to answer that question.
Also to clarify Elyse's posting. The EPO's REFI file is their citation file
and she really means the EPO's DOCDB file, which is the backbone of
Espacenet and PlusPat. While the DOCDB file is the backbone of PlusPat, we
have added (and continue to add) additional data to PlusPat from over eight
patent sources.
Minimum PCT Documentation (taken from the EPO site)
Content:
The Minimum PCT Documentation is defined as the minimum requirement for a
patent collection, which is used to find prior art documents to determine
the novelty and inventivity of patent applications.
The minimum PCT documentation is constituted by the patent documentation of
the following countries, starting from 1920:
* Complete documents: EP, WO, FR, GB, DE, CH, US
* Abstracts in English of JP, RU\SU
Patent Families (taken from the EPO site)
The EPO also describes the three main types of patent families. A graphical
presentation can be found on the EPO website.
Definition 1:
All the documents which are directly or indirectly linked via a priority
document belong to the same patent family.
INPADOC:
This is the definition used by INPADOC.
*Note: This is the more comprehensive family and the way that patent
families are compiled in Questel-Orbit's PlusPat and Inpadoc databases using
the FAMily command.
Definition 2:
All the documents having at least one priority in common belong to the same
patent family.
List of family members:
This is the definition used by esp@cenet to obtain the list of family
documents by entering the Priority Number in the appropriate field in the
search form. This will result in the display of the list of Family documents
(the hitlist).
Definition 3:
All the documents having exactly the same priority or priorities in
combination, belong to the same patent family.
Reference Document:
This is the definition used by esp@cenet to select the reference document
for display in the "document view" from a list of family documents mentioned
in the results list (hit-list).
Regards
David Dickens
David T. Dickens
Director, Patent Business
Questel-Orbit
8000 Westpark Drive
McLean, VA 22102
Phone: 001-703-556-7446
Fax: 001-703-356-4023
Mobile: 001-703-967-9766
Email: ddickens@questel.orbit.com
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